Update to Saudi attack

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Saudis Are Shutting Down a Charity Tied to Terrorists

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: June 3, 2004

ASHINGTON, June 2 - The Saudi government said on Wednesday that it was dissolving a large Riyadh-based charity, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, that has raised as much as $50 million a year and has been linked to the financing of terrorist organizations.
The charity's closing, sought by American officials for several years, represents a major step by the Saudi government to control a flow of money that has made the country a major source of financing for terrorists.

Saudi Arabia said it would merge assets held by Al Haramain and other charities into a single account to be overseen by a new national commission, whose distribution of Saudi funds overseas would be subject to strict accounting.
The Saudi move, announced at a news conference at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, was praised by American officials from the Treasury and State Departments. It came just days after the latest terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia killed 22 people, and reflected what Bush administration officials have described as unprecedented determination by the Saudi authorities to combat terrorism, even at risk of criticism from conservatives who have been the primary benefactors of Al Haramain and other Saudi charities.
Adel al-Jubeir, a senior adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, said the purpose of the new commission was "to ensure that the charity of our citizens goes to those who need it." Since the 1970's, Saudi Arabia's oil wealth and its self-image as a center of Islamic faith have made it a major source of charitable contributions, helping to feed and shelter impoverished people around the world.
The shutdown of Al Haramain had been a major goal for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, but until Tuesday the Saudi government had limited its actions to smaller steps.
In January, the United States and Saudi Arabia acted jointly to seize the assets of Al Haramain's offices in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan by asking the United Nations to add them to its list of terrorist groups. In March 2002, American and Saudi officials shut down Al Haramain's offices in Somalia and Bosnia, charging that the two branches diverted money to terrorist groups.
At its peak, Al Haramain's operation in Saudi Arabia alone raised $40 million to $50 million a year, Mr. Jubeir said at the news conference.
Saudi officials said the assets of Al Haramain and other charities would be folded into the new Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad. The commission "will take over all aspects of private overseas aid operations and assume responsibility for the distribution of private charitable donations from Saudi Arabia," the Saudi Embassy said in a statement.
Mr. Jubeir said the new commission would be subject to strict financial and legal oversight and would operate according to clear policies to ensure that charitable funds intended to help the needy were not misused.
It was not immediately clear which Saudi charities in addition to Al Haramain would be affected by the move.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, the United States government has redoubled its efforts to eliminate sources of financing for known terrorist organizations. Saudi Arabia itself has been hit by a series of terrorist attacks since last May, and it has won praise from American officials for taking new aggressive action in cracking down on militants, the clerics who support them and on their sources of financing inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
In a related step, the United States and Saudi Arabia said they were asking the United Nations to add five branches of Al Haramain to its list of terrorist financiers. If it agrees to do this, any assets found belonging to the branches would be frozen by United Nations members.
The branches are in the Netherlands, Albania, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia.
The Treasury Department said American banks would be ordered immediately to seize the assets of the five branches and those belonging to Aqeel Abdulaziz al-Aqil, the former leader of the Al Haramain charity.
"These entities and this individual have provided financial, material and logistical support to the Al Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, fueling and facilitating their efforts to carry out vile acts against innocent individuals and the civilized world," said Juan Zarate, a deputy assistant treasury secretary.

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Analysis: Reading from al-Qaida's playbook By Claude Salhani

UPI International Editor
Published 6/2/2004 7:28 AM

WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- Given the rise in the number of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, it is worth taking a good close look at what is happening in the kingdom, and to examine just what these targets have consisted of and why.
At first glance the terrorists, whom the Saudis believe are affiliated to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida's outfit, have been going after "soft targets." Or so it would seem. However upon closer scrutiny, the targets make a whole lot of sense, from the perspective of the terrorists at least.
The targets are largely civilian -- foreigners employed in the country's huge petrochemical industry. There are about 6 million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia and a great many of them work in the oil business.
Striking them in their place of work, as happened in Yanbu where six Westerners were killed in an attack on the Houston-based ABB Lummus Global company on May 1, or in their homes as in the latest attack in the eastern city of Khobar over the past weekend that killed a total of 22 people, is simple enough from a tactical point of view.
Despite stepped-up security at both locations, there is, after all, a limited amount of security that can be implemented without making those locations resemble maximum-security prisons. Additionally, with the use of Saudi military uniforms, as the terrorists were reported to be wearing in several of the attacks, fooling the real security personnel is even easier.
Following the latest attacks, a number of Americans have already stared to leave the kingdom, encouraged by their embassy in Riyadh who advised all U.S. citizens to leave as soon as possible. And although the British refrained from issuing a similar warning, the Foreign Office is warning of more attacks to come.
The terrorists hope that carrying out additional attacks on foreign workers will eventually scare them away, creating a vacuum in the oil industry. Such actions will force the Saudi oil companies to start hiring domestic workers, something that is already happening.
The "danger" in hiring local workers is that among the hundreds, or maybe even thousands of new recruits that will fill the various posts left vacant by departing foreigners, you can bet your bottom petro-dollar that a few -- and most likely more than a few -- will be faithful followers of al-Qaida.
These will infiltrate the oil installations, management offices, pipeline control centers and every aspect from drilling to shipment in the main oil centers such as Khobar, Ras Tanura and Abqaiq. It will put the sensitive oil infrastructures within the reach of al-Qaida and their affiliates.
Their next step could involve one of the following two scenarios, both of which would be detrimental to the Saudi state.
In the first scenario, the terrorists could seriously undermine the infrastructure, hampering the flow of oil. To take a page from Robert Baer's book, "Sleeping with the Devil," where Islamist terrorists sabotage the oil installations, this situation could now become all too real.
Baer, a former CIA Middle East operative, describes a hypothetical situation in which Islamist fundamentalist terrorists sabotage Saudi Arabia's oil facilities in the country's eastern province, severely hindering the flow of oil to the West. Although imaginary, the scenario is nevertheless worrisome and the threat now very real.
The second scenario could involve the terrorists infiltrating the oil production and distribution process and positioning themselves in key jobs where they could control, or possibly interrupt, the flow at a pre-determined time. It would allow them to be in a position to take over the system once they felt the time was right.
Either way, there is clear and present danger to Saudi Arabia's oil industry, the world's largest source of oil, and the main source of revenue for the country.
The one positive outcome of these latest developments is that they should serve as a rude wake-up call for many Saudis who, until just recently, refused to believe that their country could be on the verge of serious civil strife.
For a long while the leaders of the kingdom refused to take the terror threat seriously. Lately they have begun to say they would fight terrorism and crush it with "an iron fist." But so far, the fist has failed to come down very hard, and the terrorists continue to operate and become bolder in their deadly endeavors.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, who for decades ran Saudi intelligence and who is now ambassador to Great Britain, told the BBC Monday night that all but one of six al-Qaida cells operating in the kingdom had been "dismantled." But judging from the brashness -- and the rise in number of attacks -- one could easily assume the opposite to be true.
Just last week Abdulaziz al-Murqrin, a Saudi leader of a terrorist group known to be affiliated to al-Qaida, published a statement on the Internet calling for urban warfare and the toppling of the royal family. He promised that the remainder of the year would be bloody for the kingdom.
Some analysts believe that the terrorists might have already infiltrated the security services.
"The fact that most of the arrests have resulted in open gun battles suggests either that the Saudis are remarkably inept at security operations or that the terrorists know that security forces are coming," reports M.J. Gohel and Sajjan M. Gohel, terrorist analysts with the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation.
"Riyadh's ability and the loyalty of its security services, to break up the terror network now operating in Saudi territory is questionable," say the Gohel brothers.
"Bizarrely," say the Gohels, "the Saudi Arabian government announced that the current three terrorists still on the loose after the Khobar attack are part of the last terrorist cell in the country. Lessons seem not (to) be learned," conclude the Gohels.
Amid continuing threats to the country's "soft" underbelly, the Saudis would benefit to examine al-Qaida's playbook before claiming too early a victory.

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All-out war between Al Qaeda and house of Saud under way

Wednesday, Saudi officials changed the country's charity system, which had helped groups fund terrorism.

By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

CAIRO ? The killing of 22 people in the key oil center of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, over the weekend not only helped push oil prices above $42 a barrel - a 20-year high - but deepened the impression that the country is dealing with a terrorist crisis. With three attackers escaping after being pinned down by Saudi forces - apparently disguised in military uniforms - there are questions about the country's ability to swiftly tackle the problem. Continued instability in the world's largest oil producer could have serious consequences for the global economy and for the monarchy that Al Qaeda has vowed to destroy.

Saudi Arabia has recognized the extent of the challenge and has stepped up its campaign against domestic militants over the past year. But M.J. Gohel, a political scientist in London, says there are factions standing in the way of a tougher crackdown, pointing to five other escapes by attackers during firefights in the past year. "My suggestion is that this is organized ineptness,'' says Mr. Gohel. "How is it that Saudi security, which protects the house of Saud and the princes and princesses so well, can't afford the same protection to well-known areas housing foreign workers?"
Saudi officials deny there's any infiltration of their security forces and say the extent of the problem inside the country is being exaggerated. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and now ambassador to London, told the BBC on Monday that all but one of six Al Qaeda cells inside the country have been destroyed, and that there are no signs that the group is winning fresh recruits.
For the US-led "war on terror," events in Saudi Arabia show how tricky the task of counterterrorism has become. While the US State Department's 2003 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, released in April, found that international terrorism - defined as incidents in which the members of more than one country are involved - was at a 34-year low, most of the gains were made in Latin America and in Africa.
The report found a 28 percent increase in attacks in the Middle East over 2002 - almost all of them tied to Al Qaeda or militants with similar ideals. Since the US invasion of Iraq last year, there have been six major terrorist attacks in the Middle East, inspired by or linked to Al Qaeda, killing 85, compared to three in the region during 2002.
There is a small silver lining. Analysts like Mustafa Alani, a Middle East security analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, say that the attacks inside Saudi Arabia have turned a broad swath of Saudi public opinion against Al Qaeda, creating the conditions for the kingdom to pursue an "open war" against the group. Until the past year, the kingdom was afraid of inflaming popular sentiment with an all-out campaign, but Al Qaeda operations have given the government a freer hand. It began with the May 12, 2003, suicide attacks on three housing compounds for foreigners in the capital, Riyadh, which killed 36 people, most of them Saudis.
"[Osama] bin Laden can't claim that he's only killing Westerners or foreigners anymore,'' says Mr. Alani. "The May attack ... really changed the perception of the population and that allowed the government to become fully committed in pursuing them."
Part of the problem for Saudi officials in the past has been concern that going after the group would look as if it were being done at the behest of the US, which could present Al Qaeda with a propaganda coup. But now the kingdom feels the risks to its own survival, and with changing public sentiment, a tougher stance is possible.
In addition to the string of arrests and firefights that have seen 300 alleged militants arrested and 25 killed in Saudi Arabia since last year - including two Wednesday that the government says were linked to the Khobar attack - the US and Saudi Arabia have begun to work more closely together. Wednesday, Saudi officials said that the government would now centralize its charity system to give the government more control over where funds are going.
But it's unlikely that the government's campaign will yield fast results, particularly since operatives inspired by Al Qaeda have become adept at working on their own. The extent to which Al Qaeda and its affiliates have decoupled their fortunes from individual leaders was underscored by the latest attack in Khobar. Saudi officials say the key organizer was Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, the leader of Al Qaeda inside Saudi Arabia.
He's the third head of Al Qaeda's main Saudi affiliate in the past year. The group's chief ideologue, the Afghan veteran Yusuf al-Ayiri, was killed in a shootout in May 2003, and Mr. Ayiri's replacement, Khalid Haj, was killed in the aftermath of the May 1, 2004, attack on the offices of a Houston-based oil company, which killed six Westerners and one Saudi. Both Ayiri and Mr. Haj are said to have trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and Saudi officials say that many more such Afghan veterans are now inside the country. While the killing of leaders can be considered successes, they've scarcely slowed the rising pace of attacks.
"What we're talking about is an Al Qaeda so flexible, [Saudi forces] may kill al-Muqrin soon, but what will the impact be?'' says Alani. The government released a list of 26 alleged terrorist leaders last December; 18 remain at large.